Wednesday, July 25, 2007

This is beyond ridiculous

The 2007 Tour de France is beginning to make the 1998 debacle look like a smashing success. Alexandre Vinokourov was expelled from the Tour earlier this week for a positive drug test. Michael Rasmussen had been leading the Tour and expected to win, until the news got out that he'd missed two mandatory drug tests earlier in the year. So this afternoon, his team dropped him from the race.

I love cycling and the Tour, but the events this week strain what little credibility this race has left. Whoever ends up on the podium in Paris on Sunday will not have earned their victory. The race organizers should just cancel the rest of the race and spend the next eleven months working on a new way to run their event. Maybe they should increase the length of drug-related suspensions from two to four years. A positive drug test would mean the end of many racers' careers. Otherwise, just let riders take whatever they want, and forget about testing. Let the Tour be about who's got the best medical staff and HGH, and not who can ride the fastest up a HC mountain.